Not your average
render farm

A traditional render farm is usually a fixed set of machines on premise or at an online provider, with a limited number of render nodes and long queues when demand spikes. Spark SmartCompute™ works as a cloud render farm that can scale CPU and GPU nodes up or down in minutes. You can burst from a few render nodes to a large render node cluster when you need it, then turn everything off when the job is done, instead of being tied to a small local render farm or a fixed online render farm plan.

Yes. You can use Spark SmartCompute™ as a Blender render farm, a Maya render farm or a Cinema 4D render farm, as well as for Houdini, 3ds Max, Unreal Engine and more. It is also suitable as a Redshift render farm or Octane render farm where your pipeline supports those renderers. You submit jobs from your existing software project files and SmartCompute™ handles the scaling in the cloud, so you do not have to rebuild your project for a different tool. If you are working in Unreal Engine, you can use tools like Sequencer and Movie Render Queue to output high quality offline frames and sequences, then use SmartCompute™ as your Unreal Engine render farm in the same way you would for other softwares.

No. Many artists search for the best computer for 3D rendering or a new rendering workstation because their current machine cannot keep up with heavy scenes. Spark SmartCompute™ lets you keep your existing PC or laptop for lighter tasks, then offload heavy scenes and final frames to your Spark ProStations™ for interactive work and to your fully integrated SmartCompute™ render farm for final rendering. You no longer have to rely on a single expensive rendering computer to handle everything.

Spark SmartCompute™ supports both CPU rendering and GPU rendering. Some render engines and shots are better suited to CPU, others to GPU, and many teams use a mix of both. With SmartCompute™ you can choose the right nodes for each job instead of locking yourself into one type of hardware. This makes it easier to navigate the usual CPU vs GPU rendering trade offs and to pick the best CPU or GPU for rendering without having to buy all the hardware yourself.

Spark SmartCompute™ uses clear pay per use pricing. You pay a low rate per CPU or GPU node hour, plus a fixed monthly fee for your private server, manager and cache, and you can scale up or down at any time. It compares well with the cheapest render farm and best render farm options once they factor in queue times, idle nodes and the cost of buying and maintaining their own hardware. If you would like to see what this looks like in practice, you can use our cost calculators to compare on-premise vs Spark Cloud Studio for your workstations, file storage and render farm.

Yes. Spark SmartCompute™ is well suited to architectural rendering, interior visualisation and product rendering work. You can send scenes from common 3D tools and use it alongside 3D rendering software for SketchUp, SketchUp rendering plugins and other programs for architectural rendering. This makes it a good fit for studios and 3D architectural rendering companies that need to deliver stills and animations for clients from anywhere in the world, without being limited by local hardware.

Yes. Many teams use Spark SmartCompute™ as the intelligent engine behind their 3D rendering services. Whether you are based in India, Australia, the United States or elsewhere, you can use the cloud render farm to produce images and animations for clients in any location. Instead of building a large local render farm to support 3D rendering services in India, Melbourne, Miami or Los Angeles, you keep a lean local setup and let SmartCompute provide the burst capacity when multiple client projects peak at the same time.